Skeletal (27 page)

I kicked until my legs were so sore from the repeated blows that the bones felt they would shatter.

I kicked until my lower back had dug a groove in the hard earth where it lay.

I kicked until I realised that I was never going to get anywhere with it, and my thirst was overpowering me. If I kept going I would continue to expend energy. I’d continue to sweat.

My thirst was so powerful that I knew already I was in danger. I knew that you only start to feel thirsty when you’re already dehydrated. That milestone must have been and gone somewhere in the night.

I crept around my perimeter again. This time not in search of a way to freedom, but in search of a drip or a leak or a puddle that could keep me going.

Halfway through the search my vision clouded. I realised that I must have passed out and come to again. The light had shifted, changed colour. We were past the full sun so it was now afternoon. I thought of my sobs last night. I thought of my tears leaking their precious fluid uselessly onto the ground.

How long had it been since I’d taken a drink from the tap? My mouth was so dry that I left it open so my swollen tongue wouldn’t rasp against my upper palate.

I thought of all the taps at home and at school. So many of them, waiting for someone to come along and turn them. Turn their taps or push their buttons and release all their cool clear Christchurch water.

I came to again. The light had faded. It was almost nighttime.

I was dying.

It was easier to roll my body than to crawl. I rolled over once, twice. There were the wall struts again. I curled and twisted through the gap. My mind greyed out with the effort, and I may have passed out again. I couldn’t be sure.

The papers and vial were where I’d left them. Abandoned them. I rolled and crawled and dragged myself over to them. I took the small glass tube into my hand and curled my fingers around it protectively.

I had expended my life to keep this safe.

I tidied the papers in their stupid plain manila folder. They looked so innocent. So nondescript. I rolled my body once more until they were under my side. I pulled my legs up until my knees touched my stomach. Tucked the hand holding the tube on the inside of my other arm and folded them so it was safely enclosed by my body.

Safe. They were both safe.

The light had gone completely. Nighttime again. And this time without the benefit of a moon.

It was so dark. Almost total. Almost complete. Just enough light to let me know that I hadn’t gone blind.

The Grey Man came back then. He curled himself as a protective shield around my body. He held me close as the first of the convulsions hit. He stroked the hair back from my forehead and whispered in my ear that I was safe; I was loved, I was a hero.

I would’ve wept into the darkness if there’d been any moisture left in my body. The dry sobs were my only release. He held me tighter and rocked me back and forth, back and forth.

‘I didn’t tell anybody. They won’t come for my mum, will they?’

‘No. You were a good girl. You didn’t let your secret out. You mother will be safe,’ he whispered. He blew a gentle breeze into my ear. Like my dad had done when he tucked me into bed. Before he left. Before Davy died. Before everything started to go wrong.

There was the loud thump of impact behind me. The sound that echoed through my dreams. My body didn’t contain the energy to jump.

‘What is it all for?’ I asked into the darkness.

‘You’ll see,’ the Grey Man whispered back to me, ‘One day you’ll see.’

I could feel the darkness enter me. I drank from it, and it filled me up. It made me warm. It gave me comfort. I drank the darkness in until there was no light left in me anywhere.

And the Grey Man rocked me, rocked me.

***

Coroner’s Court 2014

When my mother leaves the stand it all seems a bit anti-climatic. The coroner announces that he’s reserving his decision, so we can all look forward to waiting a couple of months for a long written report that almost no one will work their way through.

She meets up with Christine and they stand and talk at the side of the room as the court starts to empty out. The pathologist checks her watch, and queries DSS Erik Smith about something. He points out the room at the back, and she hurries off to it. Doesn’t want to miss the news, apparently.

The coroner leaves, and soon there’s only Erik, Christine, Mum and Michelle left. My mother walks over to Michelle and touches her on the arm as she invites her out for a couple of drinks. Virgin, of course.

I haven’t experienced too much in the way of emotion through this whole ordeal, but this is one step too far.

That woman, that girl, made my life a misery for months on end. She tortured me every moment she could through every chance encounter. And when I ignored it all and reached out to help her she assaulted me and placed me in a position that she knew was dangerous. And then she revelled in it, publicly. Revelled in the laughing stock she’d made of me. Revelled in her revenge for an imagined slight.

The Grey Man puts his arms around me and holds me tight.

‘It’s not fair,’ I mutter. ‘She’s a complete cow and she’s inviting her out for drinks as though she’s her new best friend.’

‘I know. I know,’ he murmurs. ‘She never understood you. She never supported you. Don’t worry, I know what you did. I know how important you were.’

‘How important?’ I spluttered, almost inarticulate for a moment as rage filled me from top to bottom. ‘I died alone in a large coffin protecting something that’s disappeared from sight. That’s never going to be followed up on. That no one will ever know about. How is that important?’

He holds me and rocks me. The anger starts to subside. I watch as my mother laughs at something Michelle says, and reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. She used to do that with me once upon a time. The anger turns to regret.

‘Wait,’ the Grey Man whispers in my ear. ‘Just wait.’

But surely it’s too late to wait for anything? My inquest is over; all the evidence about my shabby little life has been rendered to the court and found wanting. There’s nothing left for me. It’s been too late for over a decade.

I follow the group of people out as they wander from the courtroom. The television is still on in the room at the back and they’re drawn to it. Like people are. Still fascinated with moving pictures in a small box, no matter how long it’s been in existence.

The Grey Man squeezes me tighter, tighter.

I see him on the small screen. Not my Grey Man. The real one. He looks so much older, and then I click that he would be. Twenty years older. His face is wrinkled with a life badly-lived.

I look from him to my own Grey Man. And back again. I move closer in, not understanding what’s going on. There’s been nothing for me about this. No knowledge admitted.

My mother is staring in fascination too. She grips at Christine’s arm, and gets a wondering look in return.

I see the fear on her face. I can see her physically start to crave a drink. Her body curls towards the craving, bending inwards, crumpling her features in lust.

I stare at her, and then to the screen, and back to her.

I want to shout at her, to scream at the top of my lungs. But there’s nothing I can do. Nothing except feel the expectation of a lifetime of misery and longing, and send it out to her, trying to telepath into her brain and her soul everything that I need, and needed her to do.

She lets go of Christine’s arm and turns away from the screen.

I can feel the arms of the Grey Man tighter still around me. ‘Wait,’ he says as I start to fill with despair. ‘Just wait.’

My mother looks into DSS Erik Smith’s face and announces in a strong voice that I didn’t know she still possessed, ‘I know that man.’

Erik turns to her, not really interested. Christine and the pathologist turn as well. Michelle hovers by the door, wanting to leave.

‘I know that man,’ she repeats in her new loud compelling voice. ‘He killed my daughter.’

The tension in the room breaks. DSS Smith turns to my mother, Christine places a hand on her shoulder, Michelle creeps in and curls an arm around her waist.

‘I know the past few days have been tiring,’ DSS Smith says. His voice hovering somewhere between pity and condescension. ‘But that’s the head of security for Seripina Pharmaceuticals. He had nothing to do with your daughter’s death.’

My mother shakes off all of the comforting hands laid upon her. ‘I know what was involved in my daughter’s death,’ she says, her voice quiet. ‘She was suffering from a mental illness I didn’t even notice she had; she was being punished simply for existing by this woman – this, this bitch - and her friends!’ She points straight at Michelle, who steps back at her vehemence. ‘And she had a mother who was too wrapped up in herself and her stupid regrets to even notice that she was in trouble, that she needed my help. I know how my daughter died, DSS Smith.’

Michelle turns away, and my mother grabs her arm. ‘Don’t you dare go anywhere. My daughter tried to help you when you needed it. She was a good judge of character, she was a good person, better than I’ll ever be. And if she thought you were worth saving, then you’re worth saving. And if I have to make you do it because you’re incapable of it yourself, then that’s what I’ll do.’

‘But I also know that they weren’t the only ones responsible for my daughter’s death. A stupid bully and going crazy wouldn’t be enough to pull her down. She was stronger than that.’

DSS Smith’s face sets like concrete. ‘We’ve all heard evidence about your daughter…’ he begins, but my mother cuts him off in fury.

‘Yes. We’ve all heard evidence about Daina’s death, haven’t we? Except for the evidence that she was found with. Except for the evidence that she was lying on and clutching to her when she died. We haven’t heard very much about
that
evidence at all, have we Detective Senior Sergeant? And would you like to tell us why?’

Erik backs up a step, propelled by her fury. ‘I wasn’t aware…’

‘You weren’t aware that you had a member on staff who destroyed evidence at a crime scene?’

‘It wasn’t a…’

‘You don’t know what it was,’ my mother got right in his personal space and started to poke her finger at his chest, emphasising each word. ‘You don’t know what it was because you let it all slip through your fingers. You let someone steal away the reason that my daughter was found in that stinking hole in the ground, and you didn’t even notice.’

Erik’s face flushed deep crimson, but he had no comeback.

‘Perhaps if you’d bothered to tell me how she was found instead of just where, I could’ve worked this out a long time ago. Instead of being forced to sit through this ridiculous charade.’

Christine tried to intervene then. She stepped between my mother and DSS Smith and used her own personal space to push her backwards.

‘I think we should all take a deep breath. I don’t think this is the right time or the right place…’

But my mother didn’t let her finish either.

‘That man on the television,’ she pointed and they all turned in unison to the screen. ‘That man faked a prominent medical researcher’s death over twenty years ago. He faked a crash site to explain away his death. And do you want to know
how
I know that, DSS Smith?’

Erik gave a single, tight nod.

‘I know that because he threw an already dead body out of a plane in front of me and my daughter. He or his cohorts tossed a corpse out of a plane and when he came to check that the scene looked the way it was supposed to, he found us. He found us and he stuck a gun in my five-year-old daughter’s face.’

She panted with the effort of speaking a truth that she’d never dared to speak before. I felt the Grey Man loosen his hold on me and I felt like chanting at her go, go, go.

‘And he said that if we
ever
told anyone what we’d seen, he would hunt us down and he would kill us. And do you know what,
Detective?
’

He shook his head.

‘I let him bully me into doing exactly that. I told myself it was for my daughter’s safety. The same daughter I didn’t even notice was in trouble when she’d been raped and assaulted. The daughter I didn’t notice had lost a third of her body weight before she died.
That
daughter. I told myself I was doing it to keep her safe.But what I really did was put her in danger.’

My mother hung her head forwards. There were tears forming in her eyes, but she swiped at them angrily with the back of her hands. ‘I put her in danger because I should’ve known that my genius daughter who knew nothing better in the world than right and wrong would never let it go that easily. She saw a murdered man split open on the ground in front of her when she was five years old. She watched his reputation being torn apart on television every night by people who didn’t even know the truth about how he’d died.

‘And she died hiding a folder of documentation based on his research, and I don’t know where or how or why she happened upon it. But when she did, she was strong enough to recognise it for what it was, and she made sure that it didn’t disappear for a second time. She made sure that it was hidden and maintained even though it cost her her life. She made sure that whatever the true research he’d conducted was, it was kept safe so that the lives already lost by not knowing that information wouldn’t continue ad infinitum.